Its not wasted space, its space that will be used in future DLC.

If you get bored go play some caravan

This, pretty much. I'm having the opposite experience. Fallout 3 started feeling bland to me as a game overall after about 20 hours...pretty much every aspect of it. I couldn't be bothered to care about Dad or the water purifier...probably because I wasn't given a choice in the matter, just "here's what your character cares about regardless of what the player had in mind, now care about it. I said care about it!" Then a bunch of side-quests that don't do anything for me outside of giving me something to check off as "done." Character development had no weight and the only abilities that mattered were combat-related.

There were a lot of places to go find scrap metal and Wonderglue, though. I guess some people like that, but I don't. I'd rather have 50 meaningful hours with a game than 300 hours of "why am I doing this again? Hey, I found another glowing blue soda bottle...neat." I'm not saying there's anything wrong with liking Fallout 3 better.

From my perspective it's a matter of substance versus breadth. Fallout 3 certainly felt like it had more to do...the problem is none of those things actually affected anything in any way, so I just didn't care about them. I'm sure I would have liked Fallout 3 better than I do 15 years ago when I had a ton of time to play games, but nowadays I just don't get excited about games that focus on hundreds of hours of mostly meaningless exploration as their main selling point. I get it that some people do, though, and that's cool.

I believe the story is great, but the map (gameworld exploration) is rather... inadequate. I love the game, but Obsidian aren't Bethesda. To me, it seems that they tell a story rather than build great sandbox gameworlds.

I completely disagree...

Yes, the NV map is physically smaller. There's no debating that. But if you were to take every Fallout 3 icon on their map and condense them to the distance between map markers in New Vegas, I doubt you'd see much difference. The big difference is that Fallout 3 has these huge swaths of land that are used for...well, nothing. New Vegas has its locations closer to one another. If you use mods like Wasteland Patrols in F3, then the swaths aren't much to mind. But if not, they're just a waste of space. Either way, you can't deny that New Vegas has more content/activity than Fallout 3. You could barely name more than 2 real 'cities' in Fallout 3 (one of which might be wiped off the map by the beginning of the game), and factions weren't of any importance to the main story.

As for why you became bored with the main story, I think the primary reason is because you went and wiped out Caesar's Legion before you even had a chance to gather allies and help the NCR before the 'battle' takes place. Of course it's going to seem a bit lame if all these NPCs are running around saying the place you just wiped out is a huge threat to them - the point is, that's not the way the game was supposed to be played.

FNV's main downfall is all the MMO-like bugs and the slow response so far to all of them.

+1 to the comment above about less dungeons. Don't get me wrong, I love Fallout 3 and will still be playing it in the future, but the metros and 'library this' 'factory that' dungeons were pretty much copied and pasted off of each other.

I would rather a novel made of words then that of one with blank pages.

That's the thing, though. The Fallout series was never focused on being an extreme sandbox series like the TES games are. Bethesda tried to force it to be an extreme sandbox RPG. They succeeded in the sandbox aspect, but I felt they somewhat failed at the RPG aspect. I didn't feel like the player had any real effect on anything. I don't feel like Obsidian failed on the exploration front so much as they didn't place as much importance in it as other aspects of the game, and Bethesda (seemingly) placed heavy importance on it while neglecting other aspects of the game.

Just my opinion. I think different people just look for different things in their games.

Im enjoying the game. The map is good, the story is good, the overall game is great. Nothing really ground breaking or awesome, overall though a very good game. A- imo.

And i really like how they did the factions, no real good guys, just varrying shades of grey. Even the legion, which to us is what we'd consider bad guys, but in the old roman times they would be the most heroic of hero's. In those days pillaging a barbarian(foriegn) city and killing men women and children was the happening thing to do. Save a few to take home and massacre them in a stadium for thunderous applause even. A++ there

Another thing about 'errand'-like quests - I understand a lot of reviews and posters advised people to 'raise speech.' Well, the whole purpose of speech in all fallout games was to take a shortcut around a harder route of a quest. If you think solving a quest through nothing more than dialogue is boring, then don't raise/use that skill. It has a lot of uses in FNV. But it is not at all required.

The lack of joinable factions and quests in Fallout 3 was rather... shocking coming from Bethesda. Bethesda can make sandbox RPGs with factions and all that, but turning such a thing into a story seems to be their weakpoint. I hope Fallout 4 incorporates joinable factions. However, I think you might also care to know Bethesda overhauled their own Elder Scrolls series in a similar way as their overhaul of the Fallout series. Arena and Daggerfall were very empty and boring sandboxes, but I can confidently state that Daggerfall's main quest, at least, was political and branching. With Fallout 3, Bethesda seemed to forget about even some of their own great gameplay elements. New lore was very lacking as were joinable factions, and that alone makes Fallout 3 lacking in comparison to Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, in my opinion. I welcome the choice of ally factions in New Vegas as it's something I know Bethesda can do, but just didn't for Fallout 3.

Still trying to figure out exactly how i'd class the BoS. Not really Norman or Teutonic knights. I guess more of a Charles Martel/frankish in a way, but not exactly. But defiently a feudal throw back.

There are two ways to look at this. Are you playing the Map, or are you playing the Game. If you are playing the map, it is lacking. However the map serves the game of Fallout New Vegas just fine.

Would it be better if the map on the Pip Boy was only as big as the areas that have content in them? Or they spread things out some more? Maybe there are future plans for those areas, maybe not. Could more have been put in there, sure, but would it serve the Game? I am playing Fallout New Vegas, not the map. I think some folks issues are First Person Shooter maps are getting huge and there are loads of places to make mayhem on each other and AI enemies. However, in those games, you are doing the same thing over and over again, shooting enemies. In this game, I am investigating an area and interacting with the world, so I don't need as many places if I do more in the ones that I need to.

Having more houses to loot just means I have more loot. More dungeons just means more Hack and Slash or Run and Shoot. There are other games for that if I want to do that. I do agree that more attention to detail could have been lavished and more buildings could have a purpose. However, I am getting overwhelmed by what is in my quest list and I am only a third of the way through the MQ. Just tonight, I looked at the strategy guide for the first time to see which quests I could get through quickly and realized most of the ones I have are going to take me several nights for each one to get through. So, I have enough to do without having to poke my way around random buildings.

Sure, there are no large towns, but there are no large towns just outside of Vegas. That is a fact. So, what towns are they supposed to add? Could the towns they do have be a little bigger? Sure, but I am getting tired right now of all the walking I am doing for a certain arms merchant as the choice of Fast Travel marker locations leaves a bit to be desired. I think it is big enough map for the game in that regard. The buildings in the towns that you do go into that you can enter do serve a purpose for the NPCs that live in those towns. So, I would expect the other buildings to be bordered up if they are vacant.

Yes, medium sized buildings set off by themselves could have been another Dunwhich or Tenpenny or Robot Factory or something else. I wade through a nest of those annoying cazadors to get to building I could not go into. That makes me go grrrr and then I save and unload most of my ammo into the building. Then I reload, but I digress.

However, while the map may be lacking in things to do, I do agree on that, game is not lacking in things to do. I do think the map serves the game just fine. I can see this far in that I have at least 6 play throughs on the MQ and I am trying to ignore the side quests that keep getting thrown at me, and I have not explored the companion quests and I have not started the completion quests (those ones where you collect everything of a certain type like snowglobes) and I have done the total Freelance playthrough either. And, this is on the map we have.

My problem with the way Bethesda handled factions in Oblivion was that I didn't care about them. In Morriwind I was made to feel like a valued member of the factions I've joined (sort of). This was completely missing from Oblivion. I was incredibly disappointed that the only thing I got for rising through the ranks of any faction was a status on my character info screen. Nobody treated me differently, I didn't get any additional responsibilities or authority, no real access to anything special, etc. Outside of the horrendous level and loot scaling this is one of the things that bothered me the most about Oblivion. In general I think Bethesda's biggest shortcoming in their games is showing the player no real results of their actions. I felt this carried through to Fallout 3 as well...even worse, in Fallout 3 even my character development decisions had little impact on how I played the game. It does get tricky from a programming standpoint to create a large sandbox and keep track of all of the effects of the player's actions, but to me there's little point for me as a player to care about anything if the only payoff I get is a checkbox next to a quest name. :shrug:

Well, technically, Bethesda did attempt to allow little, although useless, bonuses at the end of their questlines in Oblivion. I am referring to the primitive "responsibilities" system. Someone from Bethesda discussed that issue claiming they still don't know the fix for the meaningless, but they're working on it. Have you played Daggerfall before? It's factions and the privelages/responsibilites that come with its factions seem as though they might interest you and are, in my opinion, far above any similar system in Morrowind and Oblivion. For me, merely rising through a faction, experiencing a story, and gaining some shiny symbol/status is good enough, being part of the "write your character's own story" gameplay that this is known by among some other Elder Scrolls players. It is enough to satisfy me and I see such segmented things that aren't tied together as being part of the sandbox style I enjoy so much, but as you said, it's about opinions and personal preference. :shrug:

Also, being a Shezarrine is just plain badass, in my opinion, for lack of a better term.

However, if you haven't done so, I think you should give Daggerfall a try. It's free for download from the official Elder Scrolls website and requires some messing around with DOSBox, but I think you might like it.

Yes, if you want to tip toe around Faction relationships, play that game. Join a faction and one or more other ones will use you for target practice. And, you need to go to these places to get through the game or at least for side quests. So, it's no walking in to places where they just don't like you and you can bribe your way to success. It is sneaking or running around the building, find that one NPC that will talk to you without trying to remove your head and get what you need. Or looking for that certain chest and dodging arrows. Fun times, fun times.

I loved all the rewards/privelages/responsibilites involved with the factions as well. Those factions don't just sit around looking pretty while the player messes around. You've got a duty to work for your guild at least once a month, or else you are demoted in rank, you must complete quests on time, or you lose reputation, you must have a high enough reputation and skill level to rise in rank, you may only rise in rank once per month, you may gain access to this or that when rewarded with a new rank, and you may make one faction utterly hate you while pleasing the other because most, if not all, factions have enemies, as well as allies. Spread yourself too thin and you will not rise in rank without becoming a hasty workaholic. The court system, regional reputations, and social rank reputations are also pretty cool. I would dare to claim that Daggerfall has the most expansive, complex, and well-developed reputation system of any game in existence.

Wow running errands? its called quests, did u play FO3? or maybe Morrorwind, Oblivion? And you say people tell you about the man/suspects who shot you...ummmm are you not suppose to get tips towards the main quest?

You just started exploring late game? ummm where have you been? ill agree the map is not as "filled" as FO3 but i bet what you have probably been playin 30 hours plus and most likely still on.

EVERYONE stop complaining about a game you can't stop playin.

Judging from the results of the poll, those who do not like this game are in the minority. One reason for this might be all the hype leading up to the release of New Vegas. Fallout 3 was just so freaking good but the hype made some expect something well above that. But really, how do you top a game as good as Fallout 3? Anything less than the best game ever might seem like a disappointment due to the hype about this game. I am 28 hours in and loving it. :fallout:

I myself had a much different impression of The Strip. The first time you see it at night it's this glorious shinning beacon of everything that's lost and everything people now wish for. But, as you get progressively closer you see that it's a facade and not as beautiful and untouched as you hoped, the evils that befell the world hit here too.

I look at it like this, and this is age dependent. Remember that girl (or guy) in high school that was the epitome of everything you even wanted in a SO that was wrong for you? Admit it, we all had one. When you see them at the class reunion or run into them years later, at a distance you still see that image of perfection and as you get closer you see that the hard living (or whatever you fill it in with) has taken its toll.

I am annoyed that there are so many loads to get to The Strip, but am okay with it, I wasn't wanting an untouched oasis in the desert.

kinda a bummer how most of the river and the mountains are wasted space... they could have squeezed a few military bases or settlements in those areas to explore at least

Its called DLC.

They are gonna make us pay to unlock the whole map.

I'm about 40odd hours into it. I've hardly bothered that much with the main quest as i've still got loads of sides to do.
I'm nowhere near bored, i feel more like i have so much to do yet. I've been playing about with the new things introduced into this game rather than rushing through it like a lot of people seem to be doing.

As of tonight I'm at about 42 hours. Tons of quests still to do and plenty of main storyline to pursue. And while not every quest or character is excellent, enough of them are that I've already gotten some great gaming memories from this game. There is some powerful story telling here as well.

QFT!

I'm starting to think a lot of the Fallout 3 and New Vegas players never played Morrowind. Maybe they started with Oblivion?

From what I remember the reason Bethesda went away from the depth of Morrowind was because players complained that it was too much to do, too much to read and players got lost too much.

I think the difference is Morrowind was driven by the story and the ability to actually play a role that game dialogue/etc supported while the games since then have been more action driven.

There are too many invisible walls and boarded off buildings


(Seriously, there are people sleeping on the streets surrounded by boarded of buildings, wat? And who boards off th buildings in the middle of freaking nowhere?)

Other than that I am loving the game.

Have explored every inch of FO3 and FNV. Now i don't say that FO3 was better but, for me, it's just that it was more fun to play, took me longer to get bored, and had greater replay value.

Some people don't like endless and similar "dungeons" like metros and subways, abandoned factories and such. They felt they were copy/pasted. I simply didn't. I enjoyed every inch (a plus was that i had some hardcoe mods for it -less ammo - realistic needs etc). As for the classic line "i finished that and my quest log is full" it's obvious that they haven't gone through both or one of these two games in detail, therefore i don't think they can have a complete opinion.